Californians Vote: Should Porn Actors Have To Wear Condoms While Performing?

Whether you like porn, hate it or have mixed feelings, there's potentially good news coming out of California: an AIDS activist group is circulating petitions asking voters to support a ballot measure that would force actors in pornography to use condoms during filming. Most of us don't get our sexual inspiration from pornography, but the industry's influence on sexual behavior is certainly there. If California demands that porn actors have to wear condoms, it has to be a good thing.

"The [Los Angeles] county has a primary responsibility of protecting the public health," AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein told the LA Times. Weinstein argues that the county has passed the buck on the issue—arguing that enforcing the measure would be prohibitively expensive and unenforceable—so he is taking his case directly to the people.

"The ballot measure would require producers of adult films to obtain a public health permit from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and pay a permit fee' to fund enforcement," writes the Times. "The measure is modeled on health permit requirements for tattoo shops, massage parlors and bathhouses."'

More than just setting an exemplary safety standard for the people who watch pornography, the ruling could protect adult performers themselves. He argues that porn actors deserve the same rights to protect themselves as construction workers, who must wear hardhats on the job. Critics of the proposed measure say that the ruling would be impossible to enforce, and that even if it were actioned, the business would just move out of the state (hear that, Arizona?).

To qualify to be on the ballot for the 2012 election, the measure will need to accumulate 200,000 signatures by June 5.

Do you think porn actors should have to wear condoms?

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